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Epson wide format printers (and others) have some serious USB connection issues. This is a simple work around for Epson printers with an Ethernet connection: Epson 3800, 3880, R2000, R3000, 4000, 4000, 4800, etc.If you have solutions for Connecting Epson Wide Format Printers to Win 8, please contribute to this post with a comment. We all need help with this and I’m happy to add your solutions to this post and credit you.
After many issues with Win 8 and Epson USB 2.0 on older wide format printers, I’ve given up on the USB connection. It is possible to make it work but using this Ethernet TCP-IP method is much simpler and allows me to print from all computers on my network.
The Issue:
The USB problems seems to start if you plug in the printer using USB before installing the official complete driver package. Windows 8 tries to install a driver automatically but it fails to do this correctly and then the printer no longer connects through USB. The logical thing to do is to unplug the printer and uninstall the driver but this doesn’t seem to work. Epson’s uninstall is leaving something behind and I can’t find what that is and manually uninstalling doesn’t get it either. I have gotten this all resolved and successfully used a 3800 with Windows 8 but I can’t constantly repeat my success.
Ethernet TCP-IP Solution

There are two windows 7 Epson installers you will need to use for this work around. Epson does not have official Win 8 versions and points us to the Win 7 versions that do work for me using TCP-IP but not USB. One installer installs the driver and other installs EpsonNet which will connect your printer using TCP-IP.

Note- I use the 3800 Driver as an example but you need to adjust for whatever printer you are actually connecting. 3800 Driver v6.50

Step 1
You may need to uninstall previous versions you have tried but I’d skip that for now if you can get the driver to come up but not connect. Install the Driver and make sure it’s running by going to the print dialog in one of your programs, like Photoshop or Lightroom. If you can open the driver but not connect & communicate to the printer through USB, then your ready. If you can’t get the driver installed then you have another issue and connecting through Ethernet using TCP-IP isn’t likely to help.

Step 2Install EpsonNet. With the printer connected to your Lan and turned on, run EpsonNet and make a note of the printers IP Address. You will enter this address into the Windows Printer Port info. 10.0.0.36 in this instance.

Step 3Go to the Windows 8 Devices & Printers. I do this by hitting the Windows Key and typing Devices & Printers. Now you will see the Epson printer but it will not show as connected until you add the TCP-IP port with correct IP.

Step 4Right Click on the printer and select Printer Properties: Not “Properties”, lot’s of people are getting stuck here because they are clicking properties instead of Printer Properties.

Step 5
Select Add Port

Step 6
Select TCP-IP as the Port Type and click New Port.

Step 7Add the IP Address and a name you will recognize. I used Epson 3800 TCP-IP.

Step 8Confirm that the new port is selected for your printer

Completion and Connection Confirmation
Now you should see your printer connected and all should be right with Windows 8 and your Epson Printer.

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